Deutsches Museum Lebensbeschreibungen und Urkunden Georg von Reichenbach

Abstract

DURING the last eight or nine years an extremely instructive and valuable collection illustrating the various sections of science and technology has been accumulated at the Deutsches Museum in Munich, and in 1910 the committee of direction decided to publish a series of biographies of men whose work has had a special bearing on these subjects. The first volume to appear deals with the life and work of Georg von Reichenbach, to whom many advances, not only in the construction of astronomical and surveying instruments, but also in engineering, were due. Born in 1771, his education was carried on not only in school, but also in the workshop with his father, where he showed remarkable mechanical aptitude. At the age of twenty he was sent to England to study mechanical engineering, and in the works of Boulton and Watts in Soho he spent some months working at engine construction. While in England he had not had an opportunity of seeing the works of the leading instrument makers, but availed himself of every opportunity to study this industry also. Ramsden, Troughton, Dollond, Cary and others then supplied the greater part of Europe with instruments of the highest grade, but on his return to Munich he founded workshops for constructing instruments of precision, and for accurately dividing circles.

Deutsches Museum Lebensbeschreibungen und Urkunden. Georg von Reichenbach.

By Walther v. Dyck. Pp. iii + 140 + viii plates. (Munich: Deutsches Museum, 1912.)